Warren Harding’s Love Letters
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On this week’s history podcast you get the uncut version of Marco Werman’s quite riveting interview with James David Robenalt, author of the new book The Harding Affair: Love and Espionage during the Great War. It’s about President Warren Harding and his long extramarital affair with his friend and neighbor Carrie Phillips. One reason the story is so intriguing is that Phillips had strong pro-German sympathies in the run-up to World War One and may well have been a spy for Germany during the war itself. During part of the time she was involved with Harding (this is before he was President), she and her daughter lived in Berlin. Her husband remained in Ohio and she returned to the U.S. periodically for secret trysts with Harding. The affair is documented in a series of love letters between the two. Harding’s letters are under seal in the Library of Congress but Robenalt, a Cleveland lawyer, got his hands on a microfiche copy. He uses the letters to great effect.
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